The Boston Celtics are in the 2022 NBA Finals thanks in large part to the performances of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who have become All-Stars in Boston after being drafted in back-to-back years in 2016 and 2017 with the third overall pick.
Those draft picks came to Boston courtesy of the Nets in what is now an infamous deal that saw Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce go to Brooklyn for a trove of unprotected first round picks and swaps that became one of the all-time most lopsided deals in recent NBA history. The Nets never made it beyond the second round after that trade, as their gamble to load up on aging veterans like Garnett, Pierce, Deron Williams, and Joe Johnson failed to produce anything close to a championship roster.
Once Garnett and Pierce left town, the Nets went back to the basement of the East and saw their 2016, 2017, and 2018 first round picks all end up in Boston, while the Celtics racked up trips to the playoffs and now the NBA Finals. Overseeing the front office for that 2013 trade was GM Billy King, with Bobby Marks, now at ESPN, serving as his assistant GM. With Boston in the Finals, Malika Andrews and the NBA Today crew decided to call in Marks and make him relive and explain what went down on that fateful draft night in 2013 when they shipped out all those picks.
Marks is fairly used to the jokes about that trade at this point, and maybe the most remarkable thing about the segment is that he notes those picks were going somewhere that summer, because the Nets were that itchy to build on a 49-win season and try to crack into the contender realm of the East that they were going to hunt down veterans no matter what.
That deal has become the ultimate warning against mortgaging the future for aging stars, particularly when you aren’t very clearly one piece away from a title — or at least have a team that’s all but guaranteed to be a playoff squad for years to come. It hasn’t stopped teams from chasing stars but we probably won’t ever see a 36 and 37-year-old be the centerpiece of that kind of deal ever again, and Marks will never really live that one down.